Medical devices are typically autonomous. The devices deliver their resources and service according to the intended use. They integrate into the customer environment through domain communication standards such as DICOM and HL7 or through IT standards such as Active Directory protocols like LDAP, Kerberos, DNS etc. Most devices bring their own resources for functions like device configuration or license management etc. These services are intended for local device utilization. Furthermore, devices keep internal state (e.g. logged in user, patient diagnosis processing status, job queue status and contents etc.). This implies that newly bought devices need to be configured manually—very similar to what has been done for other devices before at each customer site. For example, own licenses must be administered for each new device. Also, entry of system configuration data (for example technical device configuration data) needs to be done for each device separately and iteratively in the same way, which is error prone.
Each of the devices in state of the art keeps its own local status isolated from the other devices if there is no central information system (available). For example, patient information is typed in during patient check-in in a first device of a hospital. Later, during examination for example in an MRT apparatus serving as a second device in this example, the same patient information needs to be accessed and typed in anew, because the first and second device are autonomous devices in this decentral scenario.
Thus, in state of the art it is known to configure devices manually. This, however, is error-prone and time consuming. Especially in departmental or enterprise scenarios where a new device is installed which needs to know about all existing devices is a tedious and error-prone endeavor.
If devices were provided by different manufacturers and use different technical platforms it may become difficult to exchange data due to different technical platforms, protocols, interfaces etc.
In state of the art for non-medical appliances and data exchange it is further known to provide a central node, which may act as broker or proxy to exchange device-specific data. However, with these systems it is not possible to consider additional information which is not present in the original message to be transferred. Further, this requires additional hard- and/or software structures to be implemented and therefore has disadvantages.